


the only heaven i'll be sent to is when i'm alone with you

by MostWeakHamlets



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Child Abuse, Cult AU, Cults, Emotional Manipulation, Human AU, M/M, and went very meta, author had to get creative as to why his name is crowley, barista: "would you like whipped cream?", crowley and aziraphale overshare, crowley: "I had incredible pressure put on me from the time I was born", no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 05:46:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostWeakHamlets/pseuds/MostWeakHamlets
Summary: “It is what it is, you know? I was the prophet. I was the Great Second Coming of Crowley. . . But by the time I was 16, I knew I had never been anything special all along.”Aziraphale thought he was the most special person to ever exist.__AU where Aziraphale and Crowley are human and were raised in cults--one raised to believe he was only born to be an angel and the other born to believe he was wicked and nothing else.





	the only heaven i'll be sent to is when i'm alone with you

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea a while ago about Crowley and Aziraphale being raised in cults. I have backstories and more stuff at mostweakhamlets.tumblr.com/tagged/cult+au. 
> 
> I needed to do a warmup for like Actual Writing but then I got carried away. This isn't proofread or anything so eh it's mediocre. I just wanted to post it since I spent a couple of hours on it. 
> 
> But a little context in case you don't know: Anthony's cult worships Aleister Crowley, who was a super famous occultist. The character Crowley was named after him--in every piece of media where there's a demon named Crowley. Not just Gomens. There's actual cults surrounding him, but I made this one up. For multiple reasons, Anthony's cult decided he was the reincarnation of Crowley and goes so far as to give him the last name "Crowley" but that's a different story for another time.

“When I was a kid, every night we’d all get together for worship.”

Aziraphale nodded. He knew what it was like to have to meet everyone at the same time every day when he’d rather be playing with the other kids or even sleeping some nights. 

“And since I was, y’know, this prophet or whatever, I’d have to sit up front with all the leaders.”

Anthony’s hair framed his face as he leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. The red waves rested against his pale cheeks when he sat back in his chair. 

“It was awful. I always hated it. I never had to speak until I got a bit older, but it was still miserable. Like everyone was watching me and waiting for me to make a mistake.”

Anthony pulled out another cigarette. He held it in his lips and lit it, taking a drag before speaking again. Aziraphale reached across the table to take a cigarette for himself. He had quit a long time ago, but some nights made him ache for the nicotine again. 

“Or maybe they were waiting for something magic to happen, I don’t know. I think that would be worse. Just waiting for me to suddenly… levitate or something. I don’t know what they ever expected from me.”

Aziraphale inhaled the smoke, feeling it settle in his lungs like it was home after years of being missing. 

“But I had to sit up there with all these adults, and we went through our worship and everything. We had to do listen to our founder do these chants in Enochian. And then I’d have to do them sometimes. I’m pretty sure no one knew what he was saying besides us--everyone up there with him. I don’t think the commoners ever studied the language. It was bullshit, anyways.”

“‘Commoners?’”

Anthony shrugged. “Not sure what else to call them. I was told they were all beneath me.”

“Oh, dear.”

Anthony flicked ash off of his cigarette into the ashtray, adding the pile of gray dust that had been building all day. “It is what it is, you know? I was the prophet. I was the Great Second Coming of Crowley. I didn’t even sleep or eat with anyone besides the leaders. And it wasn't like any of us were raised by our actual parents. We were born and then raised by a hundred adults.”

“It wasn’t complete seclusion, was it?”

“Sometimes. I had to study alone with the founder. We’d be in his office every day, and no one was supposed to disturb us. I saw everybody else when I went outside and at worships, but it wasn’t like I had any friends when I was a kid.”

Aziraphale’s heart sank. His own childhood, despite being, as Crowley put it, “fucked up” was full of playing with the other children in his community. They encouraged companionship even if it was only a tactic to keep everyone from interacting with the outside. 

“Don’t give me that look,” Anthony said. “Do you think I’d have benefitted from having friends? It would have made it easier for them to keep me there. I would have had kids, blindly following their parents, reassure me that I was destined for this great power--that it was only a matter of time before the community got the recognition is deserved. It would have just been even more people spouting all that bullshit at me.”

“Did you ever believe it, dear?”

“That I was Aleister Crowley reincarnated?”

“That you were a prophet?”

Anthony shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “I guess, at some point, I did. I don’t really know when I realized it was all fake. I think it was just as I grew up and nothing was happening, I was doubting it was ever going to come true. The founder kept telling me that something was going to happen during all these milestones. When I turned 13, that was supposed to be something huge. And I think he was expecting me to play along. Or he thought he had brainwashed me enough by that point that I would have convinced myself that something  _ was  _ actually happening. But by the time I was 16, I knew I had never been anything special all along.”

Aziraphale thought he was the most special person to ever exist.

Aziraphale was nervous to ask. “What happened when… well, when nothing happened?”

“He’d get angry. At me mostly. He’d yell when we were alone, but in front of everyone, he didn’t want them to see that anything was wrong so he’d go along with it.” Anthony sat up and put on a voice higher than his own. “‘We don’t know when this is going to happen. It’ll come as a surprise to us all. Aleister will choose when we need him most.’ But a lot of yelling after that. He’d tell me to get my shit together.”

Anthony slumped back in his chair. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, pulling his sunglasses up for a moment. 

“Do you think we can dim the lights?” he asked. “Bloody things are getting uncomfortable.”

Aziraphale rose to turn off the overhead lights, wringing his hands the entire way. Anthony didn’t look bothered by the stories, but it troubled him to hear about how cruel someone could be to a child for no reason at all. Parentless and friendless, Anthony had to shoulder all of the pain without anyone to cry to or to hold him. 

Until now. 

Anthony pulled his sunglasses off. He rubbed behind his ears where the stems of his glasses had left indents. He blinked at Aziraphale with his pale green, almost yellow, eyes. Anthony said that when he was born with them, they immediately used them for the claim of his divine right. Who else would be born with such serpentine eyes?

“Is that any better?” 

“Much.”

But Anthony had also said that they neglected to listen to how sensitive his eyes were. He remembered always having headaches and never liking going outside. That part, they hid from the rest of the community. They eventually gave him dark glasses and told him that a little pain was worth it. 

“Anyway,” Anthony continued. “It happened every few years. He’d insist something big was going to happen, something big  _ didn’t  _ happen, and I got knocked around in his office--”

“Wait. He hit you?”

And there were always moments the both of them had where they realized that their experiences were not universal, that their childhoods were actually full of horror and occasionally people would be appalled by what they said. 

“Uh.” Anthony looked away, eyes to the floor and chin to his chest. “Yeah. A bit.”

Aziraphale had had fantasies of returning to his community, liberating the children and imprisoning the adults. He wanted to find his family again, to get his siblings out. He wanted to light the secluded neighborhood on fire. He wanted every trace of the cult gone. 

And now, he had those same fantasies but when he lit the neighborhood--or village, in Anthony’s case--on fire, he would make sure the leaders were still there. 

“Don’t really like talking about it,” Anthony mumbled. 

“You don’t have to.”

Anthony sniffed and sat up. “How’d we even get talking about this?”

Aziraphale thought for a moment. Anthony had been talking about leading worship some nights as a teenager, which started from a conversation about how he was good at public speaking, which started from a conversation about their group meeting from a couple of nights ago, which started from a conversation about Aziraphale’s shyness. 

Which all started from a conversation about who would call to order pizza that night. 

“Dinner,” Aziraphale said. “We were discussing dinner.”

“Right!” Anthony jumped up. “Are they still open? We can still get it delivered, right?”

There were some nights where they got off track. They had kept everything buried down so deep that when they finally met one another and felt the safety and understanding they each provided, they had no control over when trauma would resurface. 

Some days ended up like that one--a conversation tumbling into others until they hit a nerve, but they ended up fine. But other days it would end in one of them crumpled on the floor, crying about a repressed memory (“My mother was shunned for a month because she had a miscarriage. It almost killed her, and they said it was God punishing her.” “I fainted in the middle of worship one night, and they thought I was being overcome or possessed or whatever. They all watched to see what would happen. Turns out I just had a bad case of pneumonia, and it didn’t occur to anyone for a while that a 40-degree fever wasn’t something to be celebrated.”) The other would hold them, cry with them, and promise it was over. 

“Did we decide what we were getting?” Anthony asked, pulling out his phone. “I’m begging you to not get mushrooms this time.”

“They can put it on one half.”

“No, no, no. They’re sloppy with it, and then there’s going to be mushrooms invading my half.”

Anthony dialed and began pacing as he always did when he talked on the phone. He was always full of restless energy. 

Aziraphale watched him strut to the counter until someone picked up. He pushed himself away and began talking, making his way to the fridge and then back to the counter. 

Occasionally, Aziraphale would think about what would happen if Anthony had never left. He couldn’t imagine him actually taking over as leader. Anthony lacked manners at times, but he could never harm anyone. Sure, he cut others off in conversation, he usually made sure he got his way in arguments, and he had a complete disregard for others when he was driving. But he also always asked Aziraphale to carefully lay spiders outside of the flat instead of killing them and never passed a homeless person without giving them a few notes. 

There was nothing in his being that Aziraphale could see manipulating an entire community.

Anthony walked to the table. Aziraphale caught his hand and pulled him close. 

“Can we have mushroom on one half?”

Aziraphale kissed his knuckles. 

Anthony was, deep down, a kind person.


End file.
